Is __builtin_expect necessary

[jalla2000]

Have you done any testing on performance in regards to using __builtin_expect? Does it give any performance increase at all?

[znort987]

Not necessarily, and not its primary purpose.
That's just a good habit to have when you write code, shows you're
actually thinking about what your code does as you write it.
Think of it as something that lives in the same space as thread safety annotations.